ARTICLES ABOUT HOGS BY DATE - PAGE 2

ISLE OF WIGHT – The local foods movement is being extended to pigs. Approximately 10 farmers in Isle of Wight and Surry counties are growing sorghum – a grain more commonly seen in the Midwest – for the North Carolina-based livestock company, Murphy-Brown LLC. The company, which is owned by Smithfield Foods and has a facility in Waverly, is buying more locally-produced grains to supplement its traditional corn diets for pigs, said David Hull,...

A heat wave and prolonged drought and the resulting spike in grain and corn prices have caused investors to dump shares of meat production company stocks, including Smithfield Foods. On Wednesday the Smithfield-based hog raising and processing giant said in a financial document that its hog production division isn't expected to be as profitable as it expected a month ago. Still, the company said hog raising would remain a money-maker because executives locked in their grain prices early, protecting it from an increase in the commodity's price.

Tasty discovery: Beef brisket sandwich Price: $7.75 Where: Hog Wild Smokehouse, 8864 Richmond Road, Toano. 741-2515. http://www.hogwildsmokehouse.com. Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. Weekend breakfast, 7 to 11 a.m. Saturday-Sunday. We'd been hearing good reports about the Hog Wild Smokehouse, named as one of the best places for barbecue by National Barbecue News in 2008. So we were overdue for a trip to this small, out-of-the-way restaurant in the Toano section of James City County.

Smithfield Smithfield Foods sells idled Texas hog facility Smithfield Foods Inc. said Wednesday it has sold a Texas hog-production facility to Cargill Inc. for about $33 million. The sale "is a further extension of our strategy to reduce exposure to commodity businesses and shed non-core assets," said C. Larry Pope, Smithfield's president and chief executive officer, in a statement. Smithfield said the facility in Dalhart, Texas, was one of several in which the company trimmed sow herds in August 2009 as part of a companywide initiative to raise hog prices.

SMITHFIELD — Smithfield Foods Inc. said Wednesday it has sold a Texas hog-production facility to Cargill Inc. for about $33 million. The sale "is a further extension of our strategy to reduce exposure to commodity businesses and shed non-core assets," said C. Larry Pope, Smithfield's president and chief executive officer, in a statement. Smithfield said the facility in Dalhart, Texas, was one of several in which the company trimmed sow herds in August 2009 as part of a companywide initiative to raise hog prices.

NORFOLK — An animal rights organization is alleging that Smithfield Foods is not upholding its pledge to phase out the use of gestation crates at pig-breeding farms that supply pork to the nation's largest pork processing company. The Humane Society of the United States, during a press conference Wednesday in Norfolk, said it conducted an undercover investigation at Murphy-Brown LLC's swine farm in Waverly in Sussex County. An employee, who spent 30 days working for the company and gathering data and video for the Humane Society in November and December, documented unsafe, unsanitary living conditions for pigs awaiting slaughter.

SMITHFIELD — Smithfield Foods Inc. said on Wednesday it posted a record profit of $76.3 million for the first quarter of its fiscal 2011, or 46 cents per share. The results marked a sharp turnaround for the Smithfield-based hog producer and pork processor, which lost $107.7 million in the year-earlier period, or 75 cents a share. Smithfield said its first-quarter revenue was $2.9 billion, up 7 percent from same quarter a year ago. Wall Street analysts polled by Thomson Reuters forecast earnings of 46 cents per share on revenue of $3.07 billion.

After struggling to gain any traction in last week's double-overtime victory over Shenandoah, Christopher Newport coach Matt Kelchner found a way to make sure his team gained that traction against Averett. The Captains controlled the time of possession, holding the ball for 43 minutes, 25 seconds, while running the ball 72 times, never allowing the Cougars to gain any momentum. "It was a distinct contrast from last week's game," CNU coach Matt Kelchner said. "We struggled all day last week, even though we went into double overtime, and we could just never get a good flow.

Smithfield Foods' sales are starting to recover after three tumultuous weeks in which the company was wrongly accused of perpetuating swine flu, the company's CEO said Wednesday at a conference in New York. Domestic pork sales of the Smithfield-based pork processor and producer dropped by double-digit percentages two weeks ago when the flu outbreak surfaced in Mexico, said C. Larry Pope, Smithfield's president and CEO, at the BMO Capital Markets Agriculture, Protein and Fertilizer Conference.

Smithfield Foods Inc. has reaffirmed, again, that it has found no evidence of the swine flu virus in any of its hogs or employees in its worldwide operations. In a news release Sunday - the company's fifth in the last two weeks - Smithfield asserted, as have the Virginia Department of Health and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that the H1N1 influenza virus cannot be transmitted through eating pork products. The company also said it has submitted samples from one of its Mexican farms to the Mexican government for further testing.